A Democratic senator moved to conceal his apparent behind-the-scenes collaboration with an environmentalist pressure group on Wednesday after inquiries into the group’s role in crafting a report accusing political opponents of doing the bidding of special interests.

The deadly explosion of a Canadian freight train could boost the case for the U.S. government’s approval of a controversial oil pipeline, which supporters say would reduce the risk of similar disasters in the future.

Is it not unreasonable to assume that a pretend meeting of the vast right-wing conspiracy would attract far more scrutiny than was devoted to the actual, real-life, believe-it-or-not inaugural meetings of the progressive “Democracy Initiative”? After all, no one seemed to know anything about those meetings, held in June and December 2012, until a writer for Mother Jones named Andy Kroll broke the story on Wednesday. As of this writing exactly two other people, a blogger for the Washington Monthly and a blogger for The Ed Show, have picked up Kroll’s story.

Supporters of New Mexico’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Heather Wilson marched on her opponent Rep. Martin Heinrich’s campaign headquarters in Albuquerque on Thursday armed with complaints about Heinrich’s big-government fiscal record—and with a monkey.

Chesapeake Energy, one of the biggest natural gas companies in the United States, has funneled millions of dollars to environmental and health groups to attack the coal industry, all under the guise of promoting clean air—and has spent millions more lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency and members of Congress. The second-largest natural gas producer in the U.S., Chesapeake donated $26 million to the Sierra Club and funded ad campaigns by the American Lung Association to steer public favor toward natural gas energy and the controversial hydraulic fracturing process used to obtain it.